It is that time of year when my good lady gets that steely glint in her eye as she surveys Chez Collins with cleaning in mind.

It is that time of year when my good lady gets that steely glint in her eye as she surveys Chez Collins with cleaning in mind.

For some reason she contends that the dawn of a new year provides the opportunity for a kind of spring clean.

Now, she is an extremely tidy person by nature, never happy unless most of the rooms are perfectly clean and tidy. The exception is my compact and bijou office which, while not a complete mess, is rather more cluttered that the rest of the rooms.

However, the January spring clean provides the opportunity for a ferocious clean-out.

I know that the climate is changing, but January just doesn’t feel like spring. It must be a West Indian thing.

At Christmas, for instance, Trinidadians change the curtains at their homes. The idea is that the celebration of Christ’s birthday should be marked by new, clean things about the family home where He is the “unseen guest”. This is admirable, but thankfully, my beloved has not felt the need to continue this custom at our Barry home, which is just as well because I’m rather fond of our curtains.

Funnily enough, imaginative Barry artist Glyn Pooley has been in touch to invite me to an ancient ceremony at The Knap, Barry, in early February to mark the “first stirrings of spring”. Well, at least it’s not January.

Given the shocking weather we have endured over these past long, miserable months, it’s hardly surprising that people will yearn for the joys of spring and hope that they will come sooner rather than later. I reckon that this year we may see a truly glorious springtime, but probably not in February. If we don’t, and it continues cold and wet, it will mean either that climate change is indeed a reality, or that those who say the “End Days” are here and the final Day of Reckoning is at hand may well be correct.

Nothing is safe when my good lady embarks on her cleaning crusade. What appear to me to be perfectly good items, such as my slippers, are condemned as “old and dowdy” and cast into one of several black bags. Doesn’t she realise that we are living in the Age of Austerity and a time when conservation and recycling are the trendy things to be doing?

What is really worrying is that this year she has focused her attention on the battered armchair in my compact and bijou office. Now, I admit that it has seen better days and could probably be fairly described as “old and dowdy” and in need of replacement.

But regular readers will know that this is the chair where the ghosts of writers and others I admire sit when they come to visit me from the other side, offering me solace, guidance and valuable advice. Among them are our very own RS Thomas and Gwyn Thomas. Where would they sit if their favourite armchair was left to the mercies of the dustmen?

“Don’t even think about it,” I said as she flicked a contemptuous duster at the hapless armchair. “This chair is going nowhere.”

At the time I was sitting in the chair enjoying the very last of my Christmas single malt whisky and beginning to re-read Death in the Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who used to join me in my office in his realistically magical way before he began to retreat into the darkness of dementia.

My good lady suggested that the size of my post-Christmas belly was such that it would take as long to reduce to a civilised size as it would take America to clear its multi-trillion-dollar deficit.

This is the sort of abuse she resorts to on the rare occasions that I decline to give in to her demands.

“Ha, ha, ha, very funny,” I countered, “My old slippers are one thing, but the chair stays.”

Of course, I have resolved to lose weight rather faster than America’s deficit reduction programme, but I’m not sure that I’ll succeed, or even that I want to.

Sitting in my battered armchair, my wife having stomped off to clean some other part of the house, I reflected that traditional resolutions of rituals like weight loss and clean-outs are not necessarily always to be admired.

If you feel comfortable the way you are, then why change simply to fit in with the latest fad. And why discard things just because they may be looking a little worn and weary?

Sitting back to read Marquez close to his very best, I heard the clatter of cleaning from another room. My battered armchair and my ghostly guests were safe for another year.

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